This invention is concerned with supplying electric power to electrically energized equipment, such as cable suspended submergible pumps and the like.
In cable suspended pumping systems, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,411,454, issued Nov. 19, 1968, U.S. Pat. No. 3,468,258, issued Sept. 23, 1969, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,672,795, issued June 27, 1972, all assigned to the assignee of the present invention, electric power is supplied to the motor of a submergible pump by an electrical cable that includes weight-bearing cable members or that is periodically strapped by bands to an adjacent separate support cable. In the former arrangement the thermal properties of the electrical cable interact with the mechanical properties of the weight-bearing components as well as the external armor, so that increasing temperature applies damaging compressive stresses to the copper current-carrying conductors. In the latter arrangement the band strapping operation requires that the cables be fed into the well intermittently so that the cables are stationary while the bands are applied. This is a cumbersome operation.